


Chemical Reactions

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fitzsimmons Secret Valentine, Fluff, High School Teacher AU, Sneaking Around, shameless matchmaking by pretty much everyone, very badly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 09:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3351065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma Simmons hates Leo Fitz.  She hates his all-too-innocent smile, she hates the morning explosions from his physics class that disrupt her biology class next door, and, most of all, she hates the fact that she can't seem to stop marching next door to tell him off.  And the fact that she kinds of enjoys it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chemical Reactions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [captainpuertoricoh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainpuertoricoh/gifts).



Jemma Simmons had a well established routine for her second period biology class. Hand back homework, outline the day's concepts on the whiteboard (except for Lab Tuesdays), begin the lesson, pause for an interactive learning component, resume the lesson, and watch the clock carefully. And today, a bright and cold Monday in January, was no exception. She carefully drew out the process of photosynthesis on the board as the clock cheerfully ticked away, counting down the minutes till chaos reigned. 10:27, 10:28, 10:29...the clock struck 10:30 and next door, something exploded. Right on cue. “Right then,” she said briskly, dusting the chalk off her hands. “I'll just head next door for a bit.”

Her class tried (and failed) to hide their grins behind their hands—she thought sometimes that they enjoyed this a bit too much. She also strongly suspected that, as soon as she left, they set some kind of elaborate eavesdropping plan in action. They were always too quiet when she was gone. Too well-behaved. They had to be up to something. 

She knocked politely on the door, but she didn't wait to be invited in. By now, he was expecting her.“Mr. Fitz.”

“Ms. Simmons.” Fitz turned from where he was inspecting a student's work to smile blandly at her, ignoring the melon-coated catapult beside him. Damn him, Jemma thought furiously. Damn his innocent smile and his boyish charm and his precisely timed explosions that he claimed were all in the name of education. He did it just to irritate her, she was sure. Practically as childish as his students, really. “How can I help you?”

“I was just checking that nothing had been demolished,” Jemma said sweetly and pasted a smile across her face. “We heard quite a loud series of explosions next door and I was concerned.”

“A practical demonstration of velocity. Just like your practical demonstration of how to dissect a rat last week. I'm sure you remember it—right around lunch time?” The way that he was glaring at her was remarkably unprofessional. But then, so had been beginning the rat dissection, and leaving all the windows and doors open, when she had spotted Fitz unwrapping his sandwich next door. In her defense, he had started it. Years ago.

“I've always enjoyed the smell of formaldehyde,” she replied cheerfully and turned to go. “We have a test next Wednesday. It would be...appreciated if you could conduct your class without explosions.”

She slammed the door, just a little, on her way out.  
***  
“And then what did he do?” Callie Hannigan asked eagerly, leaning over to shamelessly steal half a cookie.

“He just stood there for a minute and then he launched the catapult again...I really don't know,” Donnie Gill shrugged helplessly and just offered her the other half.

“But what did he look like when he was standing there? Seth? Did you notice anything?” Callie waited, tapping her foot, and sighed in exasperation. “I'm not in Mr. Fitz's class, so you two have to hold up your end of the plot.”

“The plot?” Seth asked and shot a panicked glance at Donnie.

“Mr. Fitz likes Ms. Simmons, Ms. Simmons likes Mr. Fitz.” They both stared at her blankly. “All that arguing is totally foreplay—it's very Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy?” They continued to stare at her blankly. “Anyway, we're going to get them together. Because I'm bored.”

“Told you we shouldn't have agreed to watch _Clueless_ with her,” Seth whispered.

“I heard that,” Callie said and promptly stole Seth's brownie.  
***  
“I hate him,” Jemma announced in the staff lunch room and slammed her Tupperware down on the table. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.” Skye hummed sympathetically around a mouthful of sandwich. 

“It's not personal, you know, despite the fact that his experiments disrupt my class an average of 3.5 times a week. It's that they're actually unsafe. He could demolish an entire wing of the school with one of those catapults and no one seems to be doing anything about it,” Jemma added defensively. Skye just shrugged and took a bigger bite of sandwich to avoid saying anything else. Jemma sniffed haughtily, snapped open her lunch container, and viciously stabbed a grape, pretending that it was Leopold Fitz's stupid symmetrical face.

“You already submitted a complaint to Principal Coulson, right?” Skye finally asked. “If he thinks it's safe, it's probably fine.”

“Principal Coulson has a degree in Child Psychology, not Physics. If _Leopold Fitz_ ever needs a session of psychoanalysis, then I'm sure that degree would be quite helpful,” she said and stabbed another piece of fruit. Strawberry exploded all over her Tupperware. In her head (and sometimes outside of it), she always called him by his full name. Mostly because she'd observed that he winced whenever he heard it. Skye stared down determinedly at her dill pickle and didn't say anything. “Sorry,” Jemma sighed. “I get carried away, I know. I'm just...frustrated.”

“Evidently. But, Jemma,” Skye paused, considering her words carefully. “Have you ever thought that if you stopped reacting to it, he'd stop doing it and try to get your attention in a more...responsible way?”

“He's not doing it to get my attention,” Jemma said matter-of-factly. “He's doing it as part of the three-year-long battle of wits between us—there's a real history here, Skye. He took my classroom.” Three years ago, Jemma had been planning to move into the spacious, well-lit, many-windowed classroom next door. (She'd even found the perfect outlet for her tea kettle.) Then Fitz had requested it, precisely two minutes before she'd sent in her own request. Sometimes she still stared wistfully at the classroom next door during her breaks, imagining how nice her life-size skeleton would look hanging in one of the windows.

But Skye was probably right, Jemma admitted. She should be more mature about all this or, at the very least, stop marching over to his classroom every morning. (He'd be so surprised that he wouldn't know what to do.) “Anyway, tell me about your drama kids—what went wrong this week?” Jemma leaned forward across the table.

“They keep on all dating each other,” Skye grumbled. “And changing who they're dating. I can't keep track of all of it—do you think you could make me a chart?”  
***  
It was 10:30. The morning explosion had gone off. And Jemma Simmons was staying in her own classroom and minding her own business, thank you very much. She had an evolution unit to commence, and a stack of pop quizzes to hand back, and oral presentations to assign, and if Leopold Fitz did end up demolishing a wing of the school, at least she would be able to say “I told you so” afterward. 

“Ms. Simmons?” Callie Hannigan's hand shot up in the air.

“Yes?” Jemma turned from the chalkboard with her best patient smile. Callie was one of her best students, always ready with a thought-provoking question or an insightful answer. But her questions had an unfortunate habit of leading them all off on tangents that, while scientifically fascinating, probably wouldn't help anyone get a five on the AP Bio Exam. Jemma consoled herself with the thought that if a question about the feasibility of eating a polar bear liver ever came up on the exam, her entire class would be prepared. 

“Do you think everything's all right next door?” Callie asked, frowning in concern. Or at least Jemma thought it was concern. Her mouth had contorted itself into a a squiggle that vaguely reminded Jemma of a cosine graph and she seemed to be trying to work up tears.

“I'm sure it is. Mr. Fitz knows what he's doing,” Jemma said briskly. “Now, let's begin by considering the unique environment of the Galapagos--”

“Ms. Simmons, I know this is really weird of me, but I have a bunch of friends in that class and I'd just feel so much better if you'd go next door and check that nothing's gone wrong,” Callie blurted out. 

“My boyfriend's in that class,” another student said anxiously.

“Mine, too.” In the end, it appeared that half her class had friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, crushes, or mortal enemies in Fitz's physics class and really, Jemma had no other choice but to go next door and check. It was her responsibility as a teacher. 

When she knocked on his door, it swung open so fast that she almost suspected someone had been waiting for her on the other side. “Mr. Fitz. Another day of endangering our collective lives?”

“Ms. Simmons,” he glanced up from an even larger catapult. “No endangering going on today. Just education.” He grinned brightly at her as he stood up, rolling his sleeves back down and attempting to straighten out his tie. Jemma couldn't help sneaking a glimpse at his long fingers as he buttoned his cuffs—he'd be quite good at dissections, really, if he wasn't afraid of bad smells. Very skilled at manipulating delicate objects, she'd be willing to bet. Maybe the next time one of her cheap school-issued microscopes broke, she could get him to fix it, put them all on the bottom shelves so he'd—wait. No. She must have had too many cups of tea this morning. Possibly one of them had been spiked with a behavior-altering substance, because, much to her horror, she realized that she'd just been staring at her arch-nemesis' hands. (And maybe his forearms too.) _You were checking him out_ , a voice that sounded suspiciously like Skye whispered. Maybe her college roommate Bobbi had been right when they'd had their last girls' night and she'd told Jemma that she needed to get out more, “before you snap and drag one of your fellow teachers into a storage closet”. Jemma had protested that storage closet sex was probably structurally unsound, and Bobbi had just ordered her another drink.

“Would you like to, um, test it out? Check that it isn't destructive?” he asked, shifting from foot to foot.

“No thank you. I should probably get back to, er, my lecture. So...good luck! Not blowing anything up,” Jemma added and waved. Actually waved. Then she fled—Fitz had definitely won this round.  
***  
“Well?” Callie demanded. “Report.”

“He did the fidgety thing,” Donnie offered. “And he asked her if she wanted to test out the catapult.”

“He wishes she wanted to test out his catapult,” Callie smirked. There was no reaction from Donnie and Seth. “No? Really? That was comedy gold!”

“Maybe you should use cue cards,” Donnie said, trying (and failing) to keep a straight face.

“You guys are the worst minions,” Callie sighed. “Clearly, we just have to take this to the next level. Which means recruiting more allies.” Five minutes later, Callie, a grumpy Donnie and Seth in tow, knocked on the door of the drama office and tried to remember how to be charming. “Ms. Johnson?” she called.

Skye opened the door a crack, clutching a giant mug of coffee, and glared suspiciously at them. “If you can't fix a mic pack, or rig a spotlight, please go away. I don't have any time to nurture young minds right now.”

“Actually, they can,” Callie pointed at the boys. “They're really into all this tech stuff. So they can help you and you can help me.”

“With what?” Skye opened the door just a little bit more and tried not to look intrigued.

“You know Mr. Fitz and Ms. Simmons, don't you? I'm in Ms. Simmons' AP Biology class, and well, maybe I've just seen too many romantic comedies, but I can't help thinking that they might be perfect for each other. If they ever stopped arguing. I'm not exactly sure how to do it, but I thought that that might be where you come in...” Callie trailed off and gave a hopeful smile. Maybe she _was_ too fond of messing around with other people's lives, maybe she had seen _Clueless_ too many times, maybe she was just bored with all her classes and desperately in need of something to do, but she found herself fiercely hoping that Ms. Johnson would completely overlook all the student-teacher boundaries that this blurred and join in their ridiculous rom-com shenanigans. Team rom-com shenanigans. It had a nice ring to it. Finally, Skye swung the door all the way open and whistled loudly. 

“Callie Hannigan, I can see why my colleagues call you a genius. Have you ever heard of a little play by a man from Stratford called _Much Ado About Nothing_?”  
***  
Fitz was not eavesdropping. Scots didn't eavesdrop, as a matter of national pride. He'd just happened to be headed down to Mack's classroom for their regularly scheduled snacking and brainstorming session, and he just happened to hear his name being spoken as he was about to knock on the door. And then he heard Jemma Simmons' name. Fitz peeked in through the window to see Mack talking to Trip and Hunter, the PE teachers that the students apparently called “the dreamy duo”, and immediately ducked back down when Mack glanced over.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Hunter said loudly, gesturing with his Nalgene. “Simmons and Fitz? They can't even be in the same room without arguing.”

“I don't know, man. I think it's kind of cute. The way that she goes over to his classroom every morning just to talk to him...” Trip shook his head, grinning. “Who did you hear it from, Mack?”

“Skye. She's been trying to help Simmons get over Fitz. She's been really worried about her—apparently Jemma's been practicing all these big romantic speeches, then tearing them up and drinking lots of vodka.” Mack said solemnly. “Fitz is a great guy, but she's definitely better off without him.”

“You're right. If she told him that she liked him, he'd just make fun of her. Probably with a bad physics joke,” Hunter sighed sadly. On the other side of the door, Fitz huffed indignantly. He made great physics jokes—at least, his students always thought they were funny. 

“It's a real shame,” Trip put in. “Any guy would be lucky to have her. She's gorgeous and adorable and brilliant. Except for liking Fitz.” Kneeling down, ear pressed to the keyhole, Fitz glared fiercely through the wood. Did Trip actually like Jemma Simmons? Well, Trip was welcome to her if he wanted her, he thought sulkily. Fitz couldn't fathom why anyone would like Jemma Simmons anyway (he ignored that little voice inside his head that reminded him that three years ago, he'd liked her quite a lot), with that terrifying glare (from those enormous brown eyes) and those sharp comments (from that full mouth) and that way of stalking into a room (wearing that one sweater that clung to every curve) and that brilliant mind and that—Well. Maybe she wasn't completely terrible. He did look forward to seeing her storm into his classroom on a regular basis, he admitted. It was a stimulating intellectual debate. With a beautiful colleague.

He sighed and let his head fall back against the door. If she really liked him that much...it'd be rude to not even consider it...he could just _talk_ to her...he did like talking to her, if he was honest with himself, and he'd probably like doing other things with her even more. Fitz sprang up from his crouch, not even noticing that the other men were watching him through the window, exchanging surreptitious high fives as he headed down the hallway, practically skipping. Operation Simmons was a go.

Five minutes later, he plopped down in a chair across from her and beamed at her enthusiastically. Perhaps too enthusiastically, as she gave him an odd look and continued eating her salad. “Ms. Simmons!” he said and slid a paper plate across the table towards her. “I accidentally bought two pieces of carrot cake and I thought that you might like one? As an apology for this morning?”

“Carrot cake doesn't count as a vegetable,” she said primly with a glance down at his plate. “I have some salmon nigiri in my bag if you'd like it. You look like you're in need of Vitamin D.”  
***  
Jemma hadn't meant to read Skye's texts. It's just that her phone had buzzed while Skye was in the bathroom, getting ready for their night out with Bobbi, and Jemma had checked it just in case there was a change of plans. And she'd just happened to scroll back a little bit, to make sure that they weren't going anywhere with karaoke, and there it was. The message that changed everything. Jemma's eyebrows rose higher and higher as she read it, until they were about to leap off her forehead.

First, from Skye: _You're joking, right? I demand photographic proof-- there's no way that Fitz likes Jemma that much._

Then, from Trip: _I couldn't believe it at first either. But then I found this in his bag._ There was an attachment below that, a photograph of what appeared to be a love letter. A rather explicit love letter. Addressed to her. From Fitz. Jemma swallowed hard, a blush creeping up her neck, and read on. And on. Then she read it again, just to check that it was really from Fitz. It certainly looked like his handwriting. Then she read it a third time, just to check that he'd really said...that. He certainly had. Stealing a glance towards the bathroom door, Jemma quickly forwarded the attachment to herself and erased any record of what she'd done from Skye's phone. It certainly wouldn't hurt to have a copy of it, she reasoned, for archival purposes. And if she read it a few more times, well...a good scientist always double-checked her facts.

Later that night, as she watched Jemma sneak glances down at her phone and turn a bright shade of pink, Skye sent a message to Trip: _Impressive forgery skills._  
***  
The chalkboard erasers were just out of Jemma's reach. Ridiculous, really, how she'd spent the last ten minutes of her lunch break trying to reach a bunch of erasers because no one had ever thought to buy a ladder. If she stretched a little more...and just a little more...and just a little--“Let me help you with that.”

Jemma whirled around to find Leo Fitz standing _right there_ , holding her pack of erasers and looking unaccountably pleased with himself. He was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him, see that the top button of his shirt was undone, smell whatever kind of aftershave it was that he used, something spicy and sweet all at once...and that was just not acceptable. Who'd given him the right to be so attractively distracting? He'd always been distracting, she admitted, but after reading that letter, she'd realized all the different ways that he was distracting, like his unfairly blue eyes and the fact that the boyishly charming smile actually was boyishly charming. She'd even started to enjoy marching next door to scold him for endangering his students' lives (maybe she always had). Jemma sighed in frustration. She never should have read the letter, even if technically it had been addressed to her, and even if its detailed description of the science behind orgasms had made her gasp for breath and turn pink from head to toe, and even if—she needed to focus. Focus and get her pack of (very important) erasers. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

“It's a supply closet,” he replied, shrugging. “I'm getting supplies. Which you're standing in front of.”

“I'll get out of your way, then,” she huffed ungraciously and headed for the door, tugging on the handle. Nothing happened. She tugged again and the door remained firmly closed. Jemma shoved it with her shoulder. Still nothing. “You let the door lock behind you,” she accused, glaring up at him.

“No, I didn't,” he said slowly and moved to try the door. He had even less success than she'd had. “This door locks manually, from the outside. What could I have done, used my magic telepathic powers?”

“Well, someone must have accidentally locked us in, then,” Jemma snapped. “Can't you use physics to get us out or something? Make the lock explode? You are quite good at that.” She expected him to snap back at her, but instead he just looked at her, eyes skimming up and down over her (perfectly sensible and work-appropriate) outfit in a way that made her feel warm from head to toe, and shook his head, laughing.

“You know, you certainly have an odd way of showing someone that you like him,” Fitz said and took a tentative step towards her. Four and a half inches, actually, if she was being precise. Just a few more and he could be pressed up right against her, his hips working against hers, his lips on her neck—oh god, she was going insane. A natural result of the small, overheated space. And, feeling her body tilt towards his, Jemma thought that she might like it.

“Like you? I don't, um...I don't like you. Not at all.” She'd meant to say it harshly but somehow it came out with a teasing smile, as she laced her hands tightly behind her back and willed them to stay still, biting down hard on her lower lip. This storage cupboard really wasn't well ventilated, was it? She was finding it quite hard to breathe. “Do you...do you like me?”

“No, not at all. Can't stand you, actually.” He grinned cockily at her and Jemma felt a rush of adrenaline in her veins. She hadn't played this kind of game in what felt like forever and she hadn't realized how much she'd missed it until now.

“Well, I loathe you,” she breathed and took a step towards him.

“I absolutely despise you.” Fitz took another step towards her, less than an inch of space between them now.

“I abhor the very--” Later, she would claim that he had kissed her first. But then, as his arms locked around her and she grabbed on to the lapels of his shirt, all she could think about was continuing what they'd started, kissing him messily and desperately and, most of all, hungrily, like she'd been starving for him without knowing it. His tongue was in her mouth, his hand was tangled in her hair, holding her in place, and his other hand had somehow stolen its way under her shirt, rubbing slow circles over the thin lace of her bra. “It unclasps in the front,” she panted against his mouth.

“I'm getting there,” he grumbled. “I thought that scientists were supposed to be patient.” Jemma would have informed him that she was being patient, if she hadn't been otherwise occupied with kissing her way down his neck, nipping at a sensitive spot and making him hiss, and unbuttoning his shirt. Two buttons popped off as she tugged at them, skittering across the floor. “How am I supposed to go back out there now?” he gasped out as Jemma pushed his shirt off his shoulders. “I'll look all debauched.”

“You'll just have to stay in here with me,” she informed him. “I'm sure we can think of something to do—oh!” She squeaked as he lifted her up onto a shelf and pressed his lips to hers again, only breaking away to pull her sweater over her head and stare at her, seemingly in awe.

“Honestly, it's like you've never seen breasts before,” she said, rolling her eyes but feeling strangely giddy. She'd read about a million magazine articles about arguing as foreplay, mostly pressed on her by Skye, but she'd never believed any of that before. Instead, she'd just rolled her eyes and made comments about those magazines perpetrating all kinds of myths, from the idea that spilling ice cream all over yourself in the dark was fun to the suggestion to rent a bad horror movie to hide the sounds of sex from nosy roommates. But this...this was fun. Surprisingly easy, like her words and her body already knew how to fit with his. 

“I have. Yours are just kind of fantastic,” he breathed, leaning forward to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth, then another along her jawline. Jemma sighed happily and tilted her head back to expose more of her neck, only to feel him take a step back, awkwardly running a hand through his hair. “I also, um...I haven't done this in a while,” he admitted, turning faintly pink. “I thought that I should tell you that before we, um, you know...”

“I haven't either,” Jemma reached out to wind her fingers through one of his belt loops and tug him back to her. “Which is why we should hurry up and you know.” 

“Bossy,” he mumbled against her skin.

“I think you like it,” she said smugly. She was going to come up with another clever retort, but he'd been taking advantage of her distraction to unbutton her jeans and slide a finger across her clit. As it turned out, she had been right about Fitz's hands. They were incredibly, achingly, mind-blowingly good at manipulating delicate objects. 

Later, gasping against his shoulder, his fingers digging into her hips so tightly that she was sure there would be marks later, Jemma thought that it was really all a bit cliched: furiously shagging your (sort-of) arch-nemesis in a storage closet. But then, as Fitz did something that temporarily rendered her incapable of speech, she reasoned that cliches were cliches for a reason. And this one happened to be fucking _spectacular_.  
***  
“Mr. Fitz,” Jemma leaned against the door to his classroom, narrowing her eyes at him, and subtly crossed one leg over the other so her skirt rode up another inch.

“Ms. Simmons. Per usual, nothing has been destroyed. Is there anything else I can help you with?” Fitz barely looked up from his papers but when he did, she saw the way that his eyes widened in delight before he remembered to glare back at her. His students were already starting to gather up their bags and papers, waiting anxiously for the bell to ring, and Jemma's eyes flicked up to the clock. Not much longer left to wait.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Jemma sighed. “One of our microscopes is broken. I was wondering if you could take a look at it when you have time?”

Fifteen minutes later, that same skirt was crumpled on the floor of her classroom and Jemma wondered idly if she'd ever be able to look at her desk without blushing again. It seemed unlikely, considering just how far she was currently bent over it, and just how tightly she was clutching the edge. Well, then. They'd just have to do it on her desk until she stopped blushing. Preferably on a regular basis. (Repeated exposure to a stimulus—scientifically, it made perfect sense.)

Fitz slid one hand up to tangle his fingers with hers on the edge of the desk, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the one spot at the back of her neck that made her shudder, and as she glanced down at their joined hands, Jemma thought that it felt oddly right. Like his hand belonged in hers. Afterward, watching Fitz smirk at her and inform her that a broken microscope was the worst excuse ever, she told herself that it must have been an overload of dopamine flooding her brain, chemicals conjuring up something that simply wasn't there. 

“Anyway,” he said smugly. “I brought another cover story in case your broken microscope magically fixed itself. Behold!” He brandished the latest issues of Science, Nature, and Cell at her. “We were simply reviewing the latest scientific literature in the name of education.”

“You get away with an awful lot in the name of education, don't you?” Jemma teased and peered under her desk to see if she could locate her stockings. 

“Want to see what else I can get away with?” he asked, sounding quite pleased with himself. All she could see of Fitz was his shoes and his (now severely wrinkled) trousers, since she was still hunting around under her desk, but she was fairly sure he was smirking even more widely at her, in a way that rather made her want to forget all about the stockings, which were probably ripped to shreds anyway, and see what he would let her get away with. 

“Only if it involves actually reading the latest scientific literature,” she reached up and stole Nature from him. He squawked in protest, before pulling out his own copy of Advances in Physics, and pulling her up to sit beside him on the desk, looping an arm around her waist and looking positively delighted when she let him. “What do you have planned?” Jemma eyed him suspiciously. “Sneak attack while I'm in the middle of an article?”

“I wouldn't dream of it.” And for the next half hour, he actually behaved himself. Jemma kept on glancing over at him, expecting him to kiss her in the middle of an abstract or start engineering another catapult or...or maybe she just wanted to look at him, messy curls and long fingers turning the pages and the little grumpy noises he made in the back of his throat when he read something that he disagreed with. She sighed. Maybe, kind of, sort of, she wanted to sneak attack him. With science. So she said something blatantly inaccurate about the experimental data he was examining.

They argued for the half hour after that, in her classroom, as the janitor was kicking them out of her classroom, in the hallway, in the parking lot as he walked her to her car (“chivalry is an antiquated concept meant to convince women that they need men to open doors for them, Fitz, and I can certainly walk three feet without being carried off by a mustachioed villain”), as they stood by her car, and as they continued to stand by her car until she finally snapped, pushed him up against her car door, and kissed him.

He didn't object.  
***  
“I can't believe we're doing this,” Donnie groaned, clutching a thermos of coffee and glaring at Callie from his designated look-out spot on top of the gym. “Where did you even find military-grade binoculars?”

“Seth knows people. Aww, they're kissing,” Callie cooed. “They're so cute.” She held out the binoculars to him until he finally sighed and grudgingly peered through them. “Come on, you know you're enjoying this.”

“You owe me a coffee,” he complained. “Or five. I'm freezing out here.”

“You're always cold,” Callie said affectionately and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Come here and let me warm you with friendship.”  
***  
“You're humming,” Skye said slowly, taking another bite out of her bagel and glancing sideways at Jemma. “And that's a new shirt. A shirt that could be a cleavage shirt if you undid a button or two.”

“It is not a cleavage shirt,” Jemma protested. “It is a workplace approved shirt. A respectable spinster teacher shirt.” Though she was hoping to make it significantly less respectable during her free period this afternoon. She unnecessarily rearranged the components of her lunch, loudly unsnapping the lid on the container of salad dressing and hoping that Skye couldn't see her blush. 

“Right,” Skye did her best to crunch doubtfully on a chip. “So how close did we come to all dying in a fiery inferno today?” Jemma just looked at her blankly. “What did Fitz do today? Did you end up yelling at him again?”

“Fitz? Oh, no,” Jemma shook her head, completely unaware of the grin that spread across her face. “We talked and we reached a compromise. He found a better way of exploring friction than the Slip'n'Slide he was going to build.”

“I bet he did,” Skye muttered under her breath. 

“Maybe you can still build that Slip'n'Slide,” Jemma told Fitz two hours later, legs draped across his lap and head resting on his shoulder as she idly nuzzled into the curve of his shoulder. They were curled up on a couch in the third floor staff room, the one that everyone claimed was haunted and avoided like the plague, and they'd already agreed to keep on encouraging the ghost rumors so they could come back here.. “I'm in a generous mood.”

“Hmmm...I wonder why,” he teased and slipped an arm around her waist to pull her into his lap and properly kiss her, long and lingering. Jemma relaxed into the kiss, letting her mind go hazy and his hands hold her up, and practically hummed in contentment. She was supposed to say goodbye as soon as they were done, she knew, button up her shirt, make her hair presentable again, and walk out the door without looking back. But lately they'd been lingering more and more, kissing and talking and talking and kissing until they both had to run to make it to their next classes. The other day, some of her students had even been there before her, including Callie Hannigan, who'd looked unaccountably pleased with herself. Jemma had the unsettling feeling that this, her curled up against him like a lazy Sunday morning, was not supposed to be part of their...thing. Whatever their thing was, because she was pretty sure that enemies with benefits didn't argue about science, or cuddle on couches, or kiss for so long that they ran out of time to have sex before the bell rang.

“You wore me out,” she said lazily and leaned back against him. “And I've still got a whole stack of tests left to grade—how do you plan to make it up to me tomorrow?”

“I could, uh, maybe,” his hand stopped moving through her hair and she felt him tense against her. “I could buy you a coffee today?”

“A coffee coffee or just a coffee?” she blurted out. _A date or a Starbucks to-go cup?_

“Um, a coffee?” he blinked at her, confused. “I'm not sure what kind you like, but maybe there could be a scone too?” Jemma's heart sank. It was a bad idea to get involved with a coworker anyway (more involved than they already were), she told herself no matter how much she wanted to stay curled around him, no matter how much she liked just talking to him, no matter how—her phone buzzed, skidding across the carpet, and she remembered that, even if it had been a coffee coffee, she couldn't have gone today anyway. 

“I, um, I mean I'd like to—I really would-- but I told Skye that I'd let her take me shopping after school today, because we're going to this new club this weekend—really, she and Trip are going and I'm going to sit in a corner and third wheel--and apparently my wardrobe is severely lacking in sparkle, although I'm not sure why that's a problem and I--” Maybe she could cancel on Skye, Jemma thought wildly. She was pretty sure that Fitz didn't care whether or not her wardrobe was lacking in sparkle, which was a very important quality in a...friend. A friend with very sizable benefits. 

“If you don't want to, we don't have to,” he said carefully. “Technically, I think we're still supposed to dislike each other.”

“Fitz?” she stretched up to kiss him, hard and fast. “For the record, maybe I don't not like you.”

“Maybe I don't not like you either.”  
***  
“Mr Fitz?” Callie grinned innocently up at him. He'd been pacing back and forth along the hallway for the past fifteen minutes. “Would you like to buy a Valentine's Day gram? We're trying to get the teachers to participate this year.”

“I...I don't think she'd want a Valentine's Day gram. Not that there is a she. Or that I would talk about whether or not I have a she. A girlfriend. A--” He waved his hand vaguely around, like it could encompass the entire scale of romantic relationships, and made some kind of sputtering noise.

“You know, no one has to know that you sent one. You don't even have to say who she is,” Callie lowered her voice to a whisper and tried to look trustworthy. “I think I have a good idea. Plus it's for charity—benefiting science and math programs for low-income students.”

“Well,” Mr. Fitz shrugged. “Anything for science.”  
***  
There was a valentine resting on her desk. One of those cheesy cartoon valentines with a bubbling chemistry set on the front, declaring that “we've got chemistry”, resting next to half a dozen red roses. Jemma couldn't stop staring at it. It was practically screaming her name, beckoning her over from where she was inspecting a student's petri dish. She could have sworn that it wasn't there a moment before, like it had simply appeared out of thin air, conjured up by the force of how much she wanted it to be there. But when she walked (rushed) over to her desk to inspect it, after she'd dismissed her class five whole minutes early, it was very real.

She opened the card and read it once, twice. Then a third time, for good luck. 

_Jemma_ , it read.  
 _Three years ago, the only reason that I requested that classroom was to be next door to you. To get just that little bit closer, because you are stubborn and argumentative and infuriating and beautiful and brilliant and perfect. Because you drive me insane in all the best ways And I think that for the past three years, even when I didn't know it, I've been trying to get closer, to work up the courage to ask you if you were doing anything Friday night. So...if you happen to be free tonight...I'd quite like to try to cook you a Valentine's day dinner. (I promise that we can order Thai instead if I burn anything.) And watch cheesy movies with you on my couch and do unspeakable things to you in an actual bed, and maybe get to spend tomorrow with you too. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the rest of the foreseeable future._  
 _Yours, (utterly, completely) (if you'll have me),_  
 _Fitz_

Jemma stood there in the middle of her classroom and suddenly, she understood why characters in musicals were always bursting into song. Her heart felt like it was about to leap out of her chest and she couldn't stop grinning madly down at the card and if she could have sung, she would have delivered an entire aria. “I like him,” she said out loud and giggled. “I really, really, really like Leopold Fitz.” 

She liked his silly experiments and his careful hands and his ability to find the right words at the last minute. She liked him staring down intently at a scientific journal and him tutoring students during his lunch hour and him arguing with her in empty classrooms till he turned blue in the face and let her win anyway, and him kissing her like she was oxygen and he was drowning. She liked him so much that she was falling, and falling, and falling for him and she thought that she never wanted to stop.

For the first time, Jemma Simmons didn't knock on Leo Fitz's door. She just walked in, crossing to him in a few quick steps, and for the first time, she noticed the way his eyes lit up when she did. Maybe they always had. “Jemma,” he whispered.“Hi.”

“Hi,” she smiled shyly up at him and reached out to slip her fingers through his. “I was wondering what you're doing for Valentine's Day. You see, I received this really wonderful offer and I think I'd quite like to take it. All of it. If it's still open?”

“For you, it'll always be open,” he said simply, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers and beam at her. "I have a hypothesis, you know: that if we go on this first date, it'll be the best first date we ever both go on. Would you like to test it out, Ms. Simmons?”

“Certainly, Mr. Fitz.”

He didn't burn the chocolate lava cake (although the appetizers were ruined when she decided to distract him halfway through toasting the bread for bruschetta), she only cried twice during _Notting Hill_ , and, although they came close to breaking the kitchen table, all of his furniture was intact by the end of the night. And when she woke up in the morning, leaning over to kiss him, she didn't bother to glance over at the clock. Because, from now on, Leo Fitz was all hers, however, whenever she wanted him. For the foreseeable future and, maybe, the unseeable one as well.


End file.
